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January 23, 2012

NEW DELHI — Since coming to office, President Barack Obama has pursuedan Afghan war strategy summed up in just four words: "surge, bribe andrun." The U.S.-led military mission has now entered the "run" part, orwhat euphemistically is being called the "transition to 2014" — theyear Obama arbitrarily chose as the deadline to wind down all NATOcombat operations.The central aim is to cut a deal with the Taliban — even ifAfghanistan and the region pay a heavy price — so that the UnitedStates and its NATO partners exit the "Graveyard of Empires" withoutlosing face. This effort to withdraw as part of a political settlementwithout admitting defeat is being dressed up as a "reconciliation"process, with Qatar, Germany and Britain getting lead roles to helpfacilitate a U.S.-Taliban deal.

Yet what stands out is how little the U.S. has learned from pastmistakes. In some critical respects, it is actually beginning torepeat past mistakes, whether by creating or funding new localmilitias in Afghanistan or striving to cut a deal with the Taliban. Asin the covert war it waged against the nearly nine-year Sovietmilitary intervention in Afghanistan, so too in the current overt war,U.S. policy has been driven by short-term considerations, without muchregard for the interests of friends in the wider region.

To be sure, Obama was right to seek an end to this protracted war. Buthe blundered by laying out his cards in public and emboldening theenemy.

Within weeks of assuming office, Obama publicly declared his intent toexit Afghanistan, before he even asked his team to work out astrategy. He quickly moved from the Bush-initiated counterinsurgencystrategy to limited war objectives centered on finding a face-savingexit. A troop surge that lasted up to 2010 was designed not tomilitarily rout the Taliban but to strike a political deal with theenemy from a position of strength. But even before a deal could benegotiated, rising U.S. casualties and war fatigue prompted him topublicly unveil a troop draw down, stretching from 2011 to 2014. Ifthe surge failed to militarily contain the Taliban, it was largelybecause its purpose had been undermined by Obama at the very outset.A withdrawing power that first announces a phased exit and thenpursues deal-making with the enemy undermines its regional leverage.It speaks for itself that the sharp deterioration in U.S. ties withthe Pakistani military has occurred in the period after the draw-downtimetable was unveiled. The phased exit has encouraged the Pakistanigenerals to play hardball.Worse, there is still no clear U.S. strategy on how to ensure that theendgame does not undermine the interests of the free world or furtherdestabilize the region. It is also unclear whether the U.S. after 2014will be willing to rely on its air power and special forces to keepAfghanistan in the hands of a friendly government and army — orwhether it will do what it has just done in Iraq: pull out completelyand wash its hands off the country.

Think of a scenario where Obama had not played his cards in public.Immediately after coming to office, Obama could have used hispredecessor's diversion of resources to the Iraq war to justify atroop surge in Afghanistan while exerting full pressure on thePakistani generals to tear down insurgent sanctuaries. Had thathappened without the intent to exit being made public, not only wouldmany Afghan and American lives have been saved, but also the sidedesperate for a deal today would have been the Taliban, not the U.S.

The outcome of the current effort to clinch a deal with a resurgentTaliban is uncertain. Even if a deal materializes and is honored bythe Taliban on the ground, it cannot by itself pacify Afghanistan.

Although Afghanistan historically was designed as a buffer state, itdoes not today separate empires and conflicts. Rather, it is thecenter of not one but multiple conflicts with cross-border dimensions.Given Afghanistan's major ethnic and political divides, genuinenational reintegration and reconciliation would make a lot of sense.

However, instead of opening parallel negotiating tracks with all keyactors, with the aim of eventually bringing them together at the sametable, the U.S. is pursuing a single-track approach focused onachieving a deal with the Taliban. Such is its single-mindedness thata conscious effort is under way to keep out representatives of theNational Front (formerly Northern Alliance) from even internationalconferences on Afghanistan.

In fact, the choice of Doha, Qatar, as the seat of U.S.-Talibannegotiations has been made with the intent to cut out thestill-skeptical Afghan government and to insulate the Talibannegotiators from Pakistani and Saudi pressures. The choice also mesheswith U.S. efforts to build Qatar as a major promoter of Westerninterests in the Arab world, on the lines of Saudi Arabia.

Just as oil wealth has propelled the Saudi role, gas wealth is drivingthe Qatari role — best illustrated by Qatar's military and financialcontributions to regime change in Libya and its current involvement infomenting a Sunni insurrection in Alawite-ruled Syria, the lastremaining beacon of secularism in an increasingly Islamist-orientedArab world.Meanwhile, the new U.S. containment push against Iran threatens tocompound the internal situation in Afghanistan. Iran's nuclear programis a factor behind the new containment drive. But a bigger factor isthe intent not to allow Iran to be the main beneficiary of the end ofU.S. military operations in Iraq and the planned NATO exit fromAfghanistan. Yet, without getting Iran on board, building a stableIraq or Afghanistan will be difficult.

In truth, U.S. policy is coming full circle again on thePakistan-fathered Afghan Taliban, in whose birth the CIA had playedmidwife. President Bill Clinton's administration acquiesced in theTaliban's ascension to power in Kabul in 1996 and turned a blind eyeas that thuggish militia, in league with Pakistan's Inter-ServicesIntelligence, fostered narco-terrorism and swelled the ranks of theAfghan war alumni waging transnational terrorism. With 9/11, however,the chickens came home to roost. In declaring war on the Taliban inOctober 2001, U.S. policy came full circle.

Now, U.S. policy is coming another full circle on the Taliban in itsfrantic search for a deal. This has been underscored by a series ofsecret U.S. meetings with the Taliban last year and the current movesto restart talks in Qatar by meeting the Taliban's demand for therelease of five of its officials who are held at Guantánamo Bay.Mohammed Tayeb al-Agha, an aide to the one-eyed Taliban chief MohammadOmar, has emerged as the Taliban's chief negotiator with MarcGrossman, America's Afghanistan-Pakistan (Afpak) envoy.

The Qatar-based negotiations serve as another reminder why the U.S.political leadership has refrained from decapitating the Taliban's topcommand-and-control. The U.S. military has had ample opportunities toeliminate the Taliban's Rahbari Shura, or leadership council, oftencalled the Quetta Shura because it relocated to the Pakistani city in2002.

Yet, tellingly, the U.S. military has not carried out a single drone,air or ground strike against the shura. All the U.S. strikes haveoccurred farther north in Pakistan's tribal Waziristan region,although the leadership of the Afghan Taliban or its allied groupslike the Haqqani network and the Hekmatyar band is not holed up there.

The sanctity of existing borders has become a powerful norm in worldpolitics. Border fixity is seen as essential for peace and stability.Yet, paradoxically, the norm has allowed the emergence of weak states,whose internal wars spill over and create wider regional tensions andinsecurities. In other words, a norm intended to build peace andstability may be creating conditions for greater regional conflict andinstability. This norm is likely to come under challenge in the Afpakbelt, where the dangers of political fragmentation cannot be lightlydismissed.

When history is written, the legacy of the NATO war in Afghanistanwill mirror the legacy of the U.S. occupation of Iraq — to leave anethnically fractured nation. Just as Iraq today stands ethnicallypartitioned in a de facto sense, it will be difficult to establish agovernment in Kabul post-2014 whose writ runs across Afghanistan.

More important, Afghanistan is not Vietnam. An end to NATO combatoperations will not mean the end of the war because the enemy willtarget Western interests wherever they may be. The U.S. hope toregionally contain terrorism is nothing more than self-delusion. Ifanything, this objective promises to keep the Afpak belt as afestering threat to regional and global security.

Brahma Chellaney is an Asian geostrategist and the author of six books.__._,_.___

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